Iran Sentences Newsweek Reporter in Absentia to 13 Years in Prison

A correspondent for Newsweek jailed in Iran for nearly four months last year before leaving the country has been sentenced in absentia by an Iranian court to an extended flogging and more than 13 years in prison for counterrevolutionary acts, the government there announced Monday.

The severity of the sentence, announced a day after five Iranian Kurdish activists were abruptly hanged in a Tehran prison, appeared to be a new signal of repression before the anniversary of the disputed presidential election of June 12, 2009, which galvanized Iran’s opposition movement into the biggest political threat to the theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The Newsweek reporter, Maziar Bahari, 42, an Iranian-Canadian journalist and documentary filmmaker, was arrested in the days after the election, when huge demonstrations erupted in Iran over charges that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had stolen the vote. Mr. Bahari was jailed for 118 days and released on $300,000 bail. He flew to London after his release to join his wife and newborn daughter.

The court sentenced him to 13 years and 6 months in prison and 74 lashes on charges of conspiring against national security, possession of classified documents, propagating against the government, and insulting both the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Mr. Ahmadinejad. He has the right to appeal within 10 days.

In another official Iranian measure apparently aimed at exerting more control over the capital, the government said it would shut down schools and universities this Saturday and Sunday, which would extend a long weekend off in Tehran that begins Thursday. The move effectively denies student activists a venue for any protests.

The opposition Web site Jaras reported Monday that more than 1,000 students had staged a demonstration at Shahid Beheshti University to protest a visit by Mr. Ahmadinejad. He faced similar demonstrations on May 1 when he visited Tehran University.

Photo

Maziar Bahari after his trial in Tehran last August. Mr. Bahari, an Iranian and Canadian citizen, now lives in London.Credit
Hossein Salehi Ara/Fars News Agency, via Associated Press

In the city of Kamyaran, in Kurdistan Province, the hometown of one of the activists executed on Sunday, the authorities imposed heavy security to prevent possible protests over the executions, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. “Dozens of members of the Revolutionary Guards paraded around town in military vehicles, showing off their weapons,” the news agency reported, referring to members of the pro-government force set up after the 1979 revolution.

A call for demonstrations in central Tehran, near Tehran University, on Monday to protest the executions went unheeded, apparently because of a substantial police presence.

The judiciary has issued dozens of lengthy sentences to political activists in the past weeks and has suspended prisoners’ calls to their families from prison, the Jaras Web site reported.

Mr. Bahari said from his home in London that he would not appeal the sentence, because he did not recognize the sentence’s validity. “When you appeal, that means you believe in the essence of the sentence,” he said. “I don’t.”

The sentence was issued after Mr. Bahari did not respond to a summons to appear before a court in April. The legal procedure requires the court to summon the accused three times before issuing a sentence in absentia.

Mr. Bahari said his mother in Tehran had received a call from the authorities on the same day, warning her to urge Mr. Bahari to end his activities abroad in support of other jailed reporters.

“The government wants to prevent people from coming into the streets for the anniversary of the demonstrations with these sentences,” Mr. Bahari said. “In the meantime, with my sentence, it wants to intimidate reporters as well, so that they would not cover the protests.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 11, 2010, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Iran Sentences Reporter in Absentia to 13 Years in Prison. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe